Hello from the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention in beautiful Hunt Valley, Maryland. The Garroway at Large delegation (me) arrived safely last night after what seemed like a long and arduous journey of 18,132 nautical miles and a little adventurous weather along the way. But we navigated it just fine. Last night I met up with Kevin Doherty, my co-presenter, and we discussed last details.
This morning we gave our presentation. It was nicely attended (you can’t ask too much at nine in the morning, but we drew a decent crowd regardless), and they were engaged and when they laughed, it was for the reasons we’d wanted them to laugh. Throughout the day it’s been nice to be stopped by folks who said they enjoyed the presentation, or to ask questions, or that kind of thing. There’s a satisfaction not only in having the thing in the books, but in knowing the job was done well.
With the presentation done first thing and the pressure off, it means I can use the rest of my time here to attend other seminars, browse the vendor rooms, and – best of all – meet up with friends. Mitchell and Judie Hadley are here, and they are as much fun to be with as I remember. Mitchell gave an outstanding presentation about TV Guide this morning, and is selling copies of his wonderful new book here at the show. Speaking of wonderful, the wonderful Carol Ford is again here, too, and it was delightful not only to meet up with her again but to introduce Kevin to her. Kevin has been making new friends and building valuable connections for his own project, and it’s been fun showing a first-time attendee around.
I’ve been sort of frugal in the vendor room. My top-dollar purchases have been books, because you never have enough of those. Most of the rest have been little items, typically no more than $10 each; stuff like soundtrack LPs (Victory at Sea in Jazz was something I just couldn’t pass up) and odd paper ephemera. But I did find a nice copy of a TV Guide I just wrote about the other day, and when I’m back home maybe I’ll show you something more vivid than the murky microfilm scan I presented earlier.
I’ll be back downstairs in a little bit (no way I’m missing the WKRP reunion presentation), but I did want to share an update. I’m here one more day, and then headed back home early Saturday morning. Once I’m back home, expect an update in full, including some photos, perhaps. Stay tuned!
In a few hours I’ll be on the road, bound for the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention. On Thursday morning I’ll be giving a presentation about Today, Home and Tonight with my friend Kevin Doherty. Also on the presentation schedule is our friend (and author of a newly-published book!) Mitchell Hadley, who will be speaking about just why TV Guide matters. There will be plenty of interesting presentations, a lot of celebrities on hand signing autographs (and I’m already planning to suspend my usual aversion to autograph collecting, because some of the celebrities on the program are worth suspending it for).
Last year’s convention was my first, and I had an awful lot of fun there. This year I’ll have more travel flexibility (I’m driving instead of flying…which, given the current weather situation, means I won’t have to worry about canceled flights) and will give myself a second day on site. I will, of course, post as I can from the convention and hope to provide a full report once I’m back home.
In the meantime, if you’re in the Baltimore area, come see us bright and early Thursday morning. I think you’ll enjoy our presentation. And take some time to enjoy the whole convention. You will meet a lot of interesting people, most likely make some new friends, and you will find some cool stuff to buy. What’s not to like?
:: On a personal note, it’s funny how exactly one year ago we were dealing with the remnants of Irma here at Garroway at Large World Headquarters, and now we await whatever Florence will bring. We are prepared here (my husband, who lived 30 years in Florida, knows a thing or two about hurricanes). But since we’re really far inland, we’re preparing more for remnants where we are. Our thoughts, of course, are with the people on the coast. Play it smart and stay safe, y’all.
As I take a moment from other, more pressing chores related to the day job, I’d like to remind y’all of a little presentation that Kevin Doherty and I will be giving at this year’s Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention about Pat Weaver’s great trio of programs – Today, Home and Tonight – and about the magic that Dave Garroway, Arlene Francis, Steve Allen and Jack Paar brought to the homes of viewers nationwide. We have a nifty presentation in the works (as does Friend Of The Blog Mitchell Hadley!), and we’d love the chance to talk to you afterwards. Come on out and join the fun!
– We begin this week with a happy programming note: the Wide Wide Blog is now a member of the Classic TV Blog Association. Learn more about it and find links to many marvelous affiliated blogs here (and I’ll install the blogroll here as soon as I can find a way to make it play happy with the format I use here). It’s an esteemed group (which includes some friends of mine) and I’m happy to have the Wide Wide Blog in among these good folks and their work.
– Another happy note is that the manuscript continues to grow a little more each day. I set a goal of at least 100 words a day on it, and if I don’t get that done, it weighs on me (something about a work ethic that was instilled in me at a tender age). But it continues to grow and I learn new things all the time.
And sometimes, those things aren’t what they seem to be. One challenge a biographer faces is that when you’re dealing with any account, you’re dealing with a limited perspective. Memory does strange things. Four eyewitnesses will have four different accounts. (“Wow, Rashomon was an interesting movie.” “That’s not how I remember it.”)
Sometimes we’re lucky in that we find documentary evidence that tells us how things actually went. For instance, one file contains a typewritten recollection Garroway wrote of that very first morning on Today, the last seconds before the show went on the air. He writes about how he “realized that I had better say something quickly of an inspirational nature, something wise and to the point, preferably with a little humor in it.” And it’s a great account…except what he says he said (“Good morning – it’s Today on NBC”) was nothing like what he actually said. And we know this because the kinescope tells us so:
But other times, we’re not as fortunate. And that’s where the biographer becomes a detective. How much can you find out about the circumstances? What was going on? Can you find newspaper clippings about whatever it is? (I’ll write next week about one particularly famous episode that took on a life of its own, one that has been incorrectly attributed to Today, that a newspaper search finally put the nails in.) Have others written about it? Are there photographs? If it involves a location, do those aspects add up? (Some claims are geographically impossible once you look at a map.) Did the building even exist then? You get the idea.
And sometimes you can’t find a definitive answer. What to do then? Well, sometimes you have to acknowledge the ambiguity. I had to do that in the book I just finished writing, when a family member claimed that the subject of my book had been involved in some covert operations. They were interesting claims and the account in question seemed oddly detailed, but I only had that relative’s claims to go on. All the physical evidence that would have nailed down the claim had disappeared decades before (and sadly, appears to have been thrown out along with other family papers when her children were going through her effects after her passing – not out of malice, not out of covering anything up, but out of one of those things that happens when effects are gone through and discarded after someone passes). The information was too good not to include, but I had to qualify it, acknowledging that it was based on a single source and that only a secondhand account backed it up, and though I found circumstantial evidence in my subject’s surviving papers, it wasn’t the more concrete substantiation I’d love to have had.
This is why history and biography are more difficult to write than they may appear. If it were easy, I could just rewrite the drafts of Garroway’s unfinished autobiography, throw in anecdotes I found from others, and call it done, and my only effort would be the time I put into typing it all up. That might be fun, but what kind of contribution would it be to history? It would be a souvenir, but I’m not sure it would be an accurate reflection of the man and his times. It would frustrate future historians, who look to these kinds of works as references as they write their own new works (and it’s amazing how hard it is to kill an inaccurate story; once it’s committed to print, it’s often taken as gospel, and I’ve seen great historians repeat long-discredited stories in their own works because the works they trusted repeated said stories).
And such a work would be filtered through Garroway’s own perspective, and thus limited – just as we limit our own perspectives when we tell our own stories. And memory being the funny thing it can be, sometimes things don’t add up. I’ve lost track of how often I could have sworn under oath that a thing I remembered went a certain way, only to go back and find irrefutable evidence that it was far different than I recalled.
And that’s part of why the historian and biographer must take a step back, read through claims and stories and verify them, and above all employ good judgment and sound thinking. Then again, that’s just good advice for life, period.
Next week we’ll take a closer look at this concept, using that story I mentioned above as a case study.
July 21 is always a somber date to anyone who knows the Dave Garroway story, for it was on that day in 1982 that his life ended. This year, it’s even more poignant given the recent loss of some notable public figures under similar circumstances. Anyone who has lost someone to suicide (and that’s more folks than not, I’m afraid; I can think of at least three people I’ve known who ended their own lives) knows how shocking and awful and final it is.
While I could list a series of essays and resources for those who are in pain (or for those who are concerned that someone they love might be in pain), I don’t think I could top this selection from The Mighty. Some of it’s practical, some of it’s poignant, all of it matters.
This just in: I’ll be presenting at this year’s Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention, in mid-September in Hunt Valley, Maryland. My friend Kevin Doherty will be sharing the stage with me as we talk about the Today/Home/Tonight programming concept Pat Weaver brought to NBC. I’ll be talking more than a little about Dave Garroway, while Kevin will be sharing some insights into Jack Paar and Steve Allen. And we’ll both share the honors in talking about the delightful Arlene Francis.
(And as if that’s not enough fun, a couple hours later, my friend Mitchell Hadley of It’s About TV will be giving a presentation about TV Guide. As a fan of his weekly posts about vintage issues of TV Guide, I’m really looking forward to that one.)
As the manuscript very slowly starts taking shape (and I’m pleased to report it’s now past 10,000 words), I’m coming to appreciate how much material is out there and how much I’m constantly discovering, and how all of it is making the job a lot easier. Garroway’s uncompleted autobiography, for instance, exists in two drafts and one of them includes supplemental material, and as much as I wish he had brought the story current before he put the project aside I am grateful those drafts exist, for even incomplete and with their imperfections and occasional inconsistencies (and even with their occasional assertions that don’t match the historical record) they lend an awful lot of insight.
Be that as it may, there are times when I will scour through other materials and find tantalizing hints of things that either never happened, or that have fallen through the cracks and are probably gone forever. For one, many “where are they now?” pieces about the original Today gang mentioned what they were up to. In 1977 one such story mentioned the forthcoming publication of Frank Blair’s memoir, but also mentioned that Jack Lescoulie was writing a book about his days in television. What became of that project, I wonder? I can’t begin to imagine what kinds of insight that would have lent.
The same goes for a couple of women who worked with Garroway. One of them was Lee Lawrence, who was entrusted with Garroway’s materials from his memoir project. She tried to get interest in a book about the early days of Today, but to no avail. That’s a true shame, because she knew the subject, knew the principals in that story, and would have written an awesome book. The other was Beryl Pfizer, who was briefly a “Today Girl” in 1961 and wrote a couple of articles about working on Today with Garroway. She wrote that she kept a journal of the odd things he did each day. I really wanted to interview her for this project…only to find that she died a few months before I decided to take the project on. What became of her papers, I wonder?
Then there are other things that, by all accounts, don’t exist. A few months ago I came across a tantalizing mention that in January 1977, Garroway appeared on Dr. Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power telecast, and on it spoke of his newfound faith in Jesus Christ. I’ve found a couple of promotional-style clippings and advertisements, and eBay has yielded one press photo of Garroway with Schuller (the same one that’s in the ad).
You can imagine what a recording of this program would mean for our project. My heart leapt when I came across the Schuller papers, and when I saw it included some recordings I got really interested…only to find that the recordings don’t include anything from January 1977. Nuts.
Some finds in this project have come from careful planning. Others have come from being in the right place in the right time. And some of them have come from people who have contacted us out of the blue. And this, as much as any post, is a reminder that if you knew Dave, if you or a family member worked with him, if you’re related to him, if you have something that belonged to him that has a story to it, if you have a recording of any of his appearances on anything like Hour of Power or The CBS Newcomers or anything of the sort…we’re all ears, and we’d love to hear from you. This project will be only as good as the information we uncover and the assistance we’re able to get, and we’ll certainly be grateful.
I’m not sure how many of you reading this have ever tried to write anything of significant length, let alone anything like a book. What’s it like to write one? My first inclination if you ask that question is to recommend you see a doctor, or at least lie down until the urge to write a book passes. But if you really want to know what it’s like, let me see if I can provide some insight from my own experiences writing about history and the people who made it.
First off, do you need any specialized training? Not necessarily. Some people benefit from a degree program or courses in writing history. But I’ve read some really well-done pieces of history written by people who had no formal training in the historian’s trade, and in some cases they didn’t have a degree. By the time I got into a degree program, all it did was help me refine what I’d learned from years of reading the works of historians I admired. If you look at what the pros do and learn from their methods, that’s an education in itself.
Before any of it begins, you have to figure out if your subject is something you can live with for a long time. You may not realize it, but the subject, be it a person or something else, will become your constant companion in a way you may not appreciate at first. It’ll happen not just in the interviews you conduct or the research you do through old newspaper files or in archives, but in the quiet moments. You’ll be driving somewhere, for instance, or out mowing the yard, and in those moments when your brain is sort of freewheeling you’ll catch yourself thinking about your subject, fitting together the pieces in your head or making sense of something. I drove to the supermarket a couple hours ago and, sure enough, at some point came thoughts of the writing I was doing earlier this morning about Garroway’s role during the run-up to the first Today program.
That’s why your choice of subject has to be done with care. In a sense, you’re adopting a new friend or family member for the next few months or years. Is it a good fit for you? There are stories of biographers who get all excited about the subject of their next work, only to get 50 or 100 pages in and realize they can’t stand the person they’re writing about. You’re talking about a major investment of your time, money and effort into a project, so why make it something you’ll dread?
In my own case I’ve written one biography already and am currently working on this one, and in both instances I’ve been fortunate to discover subjects who have worn easily and with whom I have shared some common elements. Ben Robertson was a fellow South Carolinian who had a hundred interests and whose circle included several people with whom I was already familiar, notably Ed Murrow. The more I got into his work, the more I felt I understood him, and it became easy for me to explain him. As for Dave Garroway, my almost-lifelong fascination with him has driven me to find out more about him, to go past the droll figure you see in the kinescopes and try to find the man himself. I have found things that are disturbing, certainly, and other things that made me sad. But I have also found a man of a hundred interests, a man with whom I would love to have had a conversation, and a man who was something other than what some of the cartoonish accounts would have you believe. And, again, the more I get into his story, the more I feel I understand him somehow.
Now that you have a topic…is there material? Google may well be your first friend, or even Wikipedia (although, as always, use that with caution). If you find an article on your subject, look at the endnotes. Sometimes a source note will tip you off about the availability of archives, or where that person’s papers might be. For Garroway I not only located two archives that had some of his papers (both of which had versions of his uncompleted autobiography project), but I also happened across the NBC papers at Wisconsin, which are vital.
If you’re fortunate, you can find some people to interview. With this I’ve had only limited success. Many people who worked with Garroway are now gone. Others may not want to talk (I’ve thus far had no success making contact with his family, for instance). But some television pioneers have given extensive interviews. The most notable (and valuable in my case) has been the Archive of American Television. I’ve located close to a dozen interviews with people who knew Garroway and worked with him, and they lend priceless insight into the man.
Another resource that’s been invaluable has been online newspaper databases and publication collections. This includes free resources like Google Newspapers and paid databases such as Newspapers.com. In those you can find all manner of items large and small, from obituaries and news stories to daily television listings, and everything in between. Even the gossip columns are useful, even if they’re not quite reliable, because you can get a feel for the moment. As always, you must treat newspapers as the rough first draft of history, but with care you can find items you wouldn’t find anywhere else, and sometimes you’ll find a key piece of evidence to debunk a myth or two.
If you have a good library nearby, spend some time there. Even a local library will have a few books that will provide some information on your subject area, and larger libraries may have periodicals that go back a ways. A large university library is a potential gold mine. With many libraries freeing up space by moving some material to off-site storage, this may require some advance coordination. But libraries have helped me find many articles, some of them obscure, that have lent a ton of insight.
The most expensive option is to buy whatever materials you can find – books, recordings, old magazines, artifacts, and so forth. Used copies of books can be had fairly inexpensively (unless it’s something truly rare). And even eBay can surprise you, not only with books and magazines and wire service photos, but occasionally there’s a true surprise or two (for instance, it’s how I found my “11:60 Club” membership card, along with four letters Garroway sent the fan whose name was on the card).
Once you’ve gathered your material, what do you do? To some extent, you have to sift through it and let things ferment. You also have to make sure you understand the documents and fill in the information you need to understand the information in context – in context of the times, in context of the larger picture. For instance, you can’t really write about Today unless you understand something about how television programming worked in the immediate postwar era, or unless you understand about Pat Weaver’s concept of “Operation Frontal Lobes,” or so forth. The same is true for personal matters; to write about Dave’s mental health struggles, you have to make sure you’ve sought good sources to help you understand depression and addiction and so forth. You have to be careful to let the information help you build a conclusion, not start with your conclusion and work backwards from there. You’re writing a history, not a tract.
And then at some point, you have to get started. I have found the best thing to do is take the task in bite-size servings. For instance, I’ve set myself a goal of writing about 200 words each day. Each day I’ll choose a document or two from the files, read through it, and try to write something from that. I then place that day’s writing into an appropriate point in the narrative. If you do 200 words a day, after 30 days you’ve written 6000 words. I’ll let you do the math, but you can see how it adds up.
(Note that the above paragraph does not really apply if you’re on a tight deadline. In that case, my approach is “type up all your notes as quickly as possible, cut-and-paste them into order, and then write the connecting words you need to string them together.” That’s how I wrote a doctoral dissertation in a big hurry when I was told “your next job depends on defending by X date” and “your committee chairman is about to retire and really wants to finish this up.” Deadlines are incredible motivators.)
Now, how much to write? That’ll vary depending on your subject and how much information you can get, but you also have to remember that not everything you come across needs to be in the book. It’s better to overwrite and edit things out than end up with a manuscript that’s too brief. For the Garroway book I’m looking at the 85,000-word range: long enough to provide a detailed portrait, but not so long that it overstays its welcome.
When you get your first draft done, it will need review. What works for me after the first couple of on-screen reviews is to get a paper copy of the manuscript (I send out for this, since paper and ink cartridges can get pricey) and then mark it up with a pencil. There’s something about a physical copy of the manuscript that gives me a different perspective, and lets me find little things I missed the first few times around.
Having a good editorial assistant is important. (Photo by the author)
After that initial revision, it’s important to get some outside views. If you have a couple people you really trust, let them look through it. You don’t want people who will automatically say “oh, that’s great!” – you want somebody who will look at it impartially, who will not be afraid to call out inconsistencies or errors or other areas where you fell a little short. Remember, the goal is to make the manuscript stronger.
Once all that’s done and you’ve polished it? Then it becomes a matter of getting it published. If there’s an academic angle or an alumni-related tie-in, sometimes a university press might be interested. Other times, a small specialty publisher is your best hope. You can even go the self-publishing route. But unless you’re extremely lucky, or motivated, or have a good agent, don’t count on the big publishers beating a path to your door.
Sure, on occasion I have dreams of a major publisher picking up the Garroway manuscript, of getting some kind of really good contract and having a full publicity push and maybe even ending up on some morning programs talking about the Dave Garroway story. But I am just as quickly reminded of how unlikely this is. Besides, what’s the real motivation behind this project? It’s not fame, and it’s certainly not money (although I do hope to at least recoup a little of what I’ve invested in all this). It all comes down to telling a story that needs to be told. Somehow, this story went untold for so long, and through circumstance it’s ended up in these hands. My goal is to tell it. And if we can tell it honestly, with insight and compassion, then that will be a reward in itself.
I’m happy to say the Garroway at Large delegation to the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention is now home after a successful and fun visit. While it was an intense two days or so, and while it was much less time than I’d have liked to spend there, it was well worth the effort.
The journey started for me at the nearest airport providing direct flights to Baltimore. It was a brief but pleasant flight up. Then at the Baltimore airport, it was off to the light rail station for what turned out to be a long ride out to Hunt Valley. As it happened, the light rail trip was longer than the flight up. At Hunt Valley itself, I found that my estimate of the place via Google Maps was mistaken, and that walking from the light rail station to the hotel took some inventiveness. A couple times I crossed myself up. But, eventually, I got there.
The Hunt Valley Delta Hotel is a sprawling hotel. It reminds me a lot of the Doubletree across from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport: a lot of jogs and doglegs connecting various wings. But, like my memories of countless nights at the SeaTac Doubletree, if you’re fortunate in which room you draw, you feel like you’re staying in a nicely secluded place, and the rooms are pretty nice. I was very happy with my room, which was at the end of a corridor and had a view of a peaceful courtyard. It was certainly a nice place to unwind after a busy and slightly weird day of travel.
The next morning I headed downstairs to the convention. Now, having recently helped plan and run a large national convention, I know what the organizers of something like this are up against. And if anything went wrong while I was there, I certainly could not tell. There were plenty of volunteers on hand, all wearing bright shirts, ready to help (and staying busy helping in a hundred ways large and small). I encountered no difficulties of my own, and I didn’t see anything go off the rails in the time I spent on the convention floor. This convention was competently run and everyone I encountered seemed happy.
The hallways and one ballroom were given over to the vendors. I’ll show you a few photos, and perhaps your billfold will run in the corner and hide when you see it’s possible to find just about anything and everything there:
Here’s one of the hallways. Many vendors emphasized items related to the many celebrity guests; you could buy, for instance, that Annie poster and have Aileen Quinn sign it. (Wasn’t it only yesterday, by the way, it was 1982 and the film version of Annie was everywhere? Aileen Quinn was all over just about every magazine cover when I was a kid. And all of a sudden I’m in a vendor room and I look over and there’s a grown-up Aileen Quinn signing autographs, and I’m reminded again how time flies in this small world of ours.)
Entering the ballroom where more vendors were set up. Some of the guest celebrities were signing in here; other tables hosted some of the most amazing collections of this-and-that you could find. My wallet was not immune.
Here’s another view. Wouldn’t you just enjoy trying to get that framed art on the airplane back home? Heh.
And, this being a convention for fans of pop culture, there’s no shortage of opportunities to indulge your geekery. This particular display had a steady stream of takers.
Here’s a few wares that I found particularly interesting:
Some of those caricatures are better than others. But that one of Ray Bradbury is truly for the ages.
I grew up a Twilight Zone fan and understood what these were supposed to be. But, so help me, the only thing I could think of was a certain stanza of this song.
I’m still kicking myself for not buying this.
But the convention isn’t just about the merchandise. (It isn’t?) Nope. There are panels, presentations, movies and rare programs for the viewing, re-enactments of radio programs. Here, for instance, is a presentation by author Johnny Ray Miller about his research into The Partridge Family.
Another session featured Jeremy Ambler, Cindy Williams, Gary Conway and Dawn Wells discussing their experiences on iconic television series:
(Forgive the pixelation on this; I was at the back of the room when I took this and the next one, and the zoom on the iPhone was screaming for mercy.) This session was particularly fun. Cindy Williams shared a couple of very sweet stories about working with Robin Williams. And Dawn Wells is a hoot. If you ever get to see her, do so.
That collection of pixels depicts Shirley Jones about to take questions from the audience. I didn’t have any interactions with any of the celebrities and really wasn’t around them – the most I did was pull myself to one side in a crowded hallway to let one of them through – but from everything I saw at the signing tables and in the seminars, all the celebrity guests were grateful for the fans’ interest and interacted with them kindly.
While it was neat seeing a few famous faces, the real reason I was there was to meet people and make connections. And I met some nice folks along the way. Novelist John French was very generous with his advice on getting started in fiction, crime writing in particular, and I had him sign a couple books for me (and yes, I bought them when he signed them. Look, make your own jokes on your own blog, will you?).
There were some folks I was really hoping to meet, and I met two of the most important. One of them was Mitchell Hadley, of It’s About TV. I met up with him and his wife on Thursday morning. I wish I could tell you about our conversation, but I would have trouble describing it because (a) I don’t think 90 minutes have ever elapsed so quickly in my life, (b) we all got one another’s references on even the most obscure things about so many topics – I mean, how does a conversation that starts out talking about Dave Garroway wind around to us talking about Jimmy Clark and Swede Savage? – and (c) it was just so much fun that putting that conversation into words just would not do. I think at least half of those 90 minutes were consumed by laughter. Having only known Mitchell through his blog and through e-mail, it was great not only to put a face with the name, but to have so much fun and connect so quickly on so many levels (and to find his wife is as much fun as he is)…that was a treat.
The other really good meet-up I had? That was with Carol Ford, who was there promoting her book Bob Crane: The Definitive Biography. In two really good conversations I had with her, Carol shared the lessons she’d learned while working on the book, and gave me several pointers on how to make the process less stressful for everyone involved. And I brought home a signed copy of the book, too, which I am reading and enjoying. There’s a prevailing perception about Bob Crane that’s been reinforced through the years by various stories, a motion picture, and countless tasteless jokes. Ford’s massive, incredibly well-sourced book looks at Crane as a complete human being, and works to put his story into an appropriate context. In my conversations with her, I told her I was interested in how her book handled Crane’s complex story, because we’re dealing with a complicated and sensitive story in writing about Dave Garroway. Carol was incredibly generous with her time and advice, and I am deeply grateful; as I read the book, I am learning not only how to handle such a subject, but I am also enjoying it. (Get yourself a copy, too. And now. You won’t regret doing so.)
What else did I bring home? Well, what good would it be if I spoiled the surprises now? Suffice to say that I found a few Garroway-related items; not many, but just enough to help deplete my cash supply.
Soon, it was time to get back up to the room and prepare for a really early departure. After too few hours of rest, it was out the door and waiting for the ride back to BWI. As I waited out front at 5 am, I caught a glimpse of vendor tables slumbering in the wee hours.
And all too soon, my ride was here; off to the airport, and soon I was headed home.
The world stands out on either side — no wider than the heart is wide; Above the earth is stretched the sky — no higher than the soul is high.
It was too brief, yes, but it was too much fun. And I’ll be back soon. With some luck, it’ll be with a completed book.
Thanks to everyone who made this convention possible for everyone, and special thanks to everyone who made it extra special for me. And if you’ve never been to one of these, give it some thought. As a satisfied customer, I think you’ll be happy if you attend.
Brief update: I’m well north and east of Irma, and well inland too. Friends and relatives in Florida report they’re safe, and that’s what matters most. We’ve had remnants range out our way, bringing a lot of rain and some wind, but nothing I haven’t seen before; we haven’t been hit the way other areas in our state have been. My husband and I are safe and dry, the power and Internet and satellite TV have all stayed on (knock wood), and our two cats have aggressively napped through it all. We are fortunate, but there have been many who have lost much, if not everything. Keep them in your thoughts, always.
Looking ahead: If all continues to go as hoped I will be headed out Wednesday morning to the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention. I’ll only be there for Thursday (you can mainly thank a tighter budget than I’d like), but I’m looking forward to making the most of my time there, making a few contacts, and putting some faces with some names I know. And, of course, scouring the vendor room for items I can’t live without – related not only to Garroway, but to any of the 17 million other things I’m interested in.
If you’re planning to be there and want to say hello, drop me a note. And if you’re not…if I get a chance, I’ll post from the convention, and if I don’t I’ll write about it when I get back. And, of course, if I find anything interesting that relates to Dave Garroway, you’ll find out about it here! Stay tuned.
In a few hours I’ll be on the road, bound for the 
Then there are other things that, by all accounts, don’t exist. A few months ago I came across a tantalizing mention that in January 1977, Garroway appeared on Dr. Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power telecast, and on it spoke of his newfound faith in Jesus Christ. I’ve found a couple of promotional-style clippings and advertisements, and eBay has yielded one press photo of Garroway with Schuller (the same one that’s in the ad).
Here’s another view. Wouldn’t you just enjoy trying to get that framed art on the airplane back home? Heh.
